501 by Robert Field

Author:Robert Field [Field, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786231314
Publisher: Grosvenor House Publishing
Published: 2018-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

Monday night darts in January.

The George versus the Queen Elizabeth.

Scottie Dog.

I don’t like sitting in on these dark stormy winter nights now I’m an old – I mean, elderly – woman. The night never used to worry me; the dark used to be warm and comfortable, sometimes passionate. And mostly concealing.

Even when I was a little girl, plain Marie Stewart, I’d lie in bed, listening to the Scottish gale seeking out the loose tiles on our roof. They’d rattle and clap like…

‘Like Mrs Delaney’s false teeth,’ Mam says and laughs.

Mrs Delaney is our neighbour and her teeth are always slopping around her mouth. Occasionally the top set will pop out and she crams them back in with an, ‘Och, the little devils are alive.’

Mam laughs again and I always see her, remember her, like that; always smiling, always laughing; the happy-go-lucky Mam of no consequence.

On this night of long ago, Mam’s getting ready to go out – dressing up to the nines, whatever that means. She’s straightened her stockings, fluffed up her hair and painted her face.

‘Now don’t answer the door to anyone,’ she says, and then she kisses me goodnight. Then she holds me, hugs me. ‘My bonny wee War Baby.’

I remember the warmth, the smell of her, to this day and I remember what the two words ‘war baby’ meant then. It meant no father, or no father who was around. Before I realised the impossibility of it I used to imagine a rich, handsome American turning up in one of those huge gleaming cars. He’d park in the street, ring on our bell and I’d answer the door to:

‘You must be my little girl.’

He’d pick me up, throw me into the air and we’d drive to an ice-cream parlour (in Dundee!) and he’d order me a huge Knickerbocker Glory and a tall glass of soda-pop, like in the films.

It’s funny, Mam was never in those daydreams; it was just me and him.

And all she says when I ask about my father is, ‘He was in the army. He was away too much,’ and her face hardens into one of those ‘no more questions’ expression.

So Mam says, ‘I’ll not be too long.’

The ‘not long’ will happen when I’m deep in the Land of Nod but for now, as soon as she’s gone, I go to the window and watch the street by the lamplight, watch Mam walk the length of this road, watch her disappear around the corner. I can almost hear the tap of her heels on the pavement. From up here, in our rooms above the ironmongers, I turn off the light and watch the night-life of the town begin.

So I’m here in nineteen fifty-three, a face at the window. I’m twelve years old and the Scottish rain is sweeping the Dundee streets. In my street, from my window to the world, the bright door of the Jolly Sailor swings open and shut, people spill out into the rain, people spill in from the rain. There’s deep male laughter, high-pitched giggles, and always the glow of cigarettes.

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